sebastian di mauro 1987-2009
In one of the back rooms of Sebastian di Mauro’s survey exhibition at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) were receptacles of olive oil in a series of small lakes formed inside mounds of raw sugar. Surrounded by carpet underlay, which contributed its ‘old’ smell to the visual experience, and hand written text on the wall, this was a reinstallation of di Mauro’s early Respirare (1999), which I saw in a dank room in the valley (the Institute of Modern Art at Gipps Street) in the 1990s. The scent of the oil, the warmth of the sugar (stronger in the earlier installation which included suspended lights heating the oil), created strong sensory overload.
In an adjacent room at QUT were di Mauro’s ‘Floccus’ works. Some oversized, many with yawning crevices and voids, their carpet underlay material exuded mustiness and contributed to a confronting dalliance with such personal phobias as vertigo, claustrophobia or lack of control. Each of the many discrete spaces in QUT’s galleries contributed another chapter to di Mauro’s oeuvre, and to an understanding of his key interests which curator Simone Jones has described as developing an ‘ebb and flow throughout his work, receding to make way for each other and for new forms before returning in another body of work’. The exhibition opened with the more recent Astroturf sculptures, and in this tightly curated selection the threads of di Mauro’s career came together and pulled tight. This experience was a fairly common one with many of the audience noting their positive responses in the visitor’s book.
Both exhibition and book are titled Footnotes of a verdurous tale: Sebastian di Mauro 1987-2009 and together make sense of